LinkedIn is a great free service that helps you build a professional network—but if you’ve used LinkedIn, you’ll know that the site tries to get you to upgrade to its premium offering on a regular basis. So, is LinkedIn Premium worth it?

In this article, we’ll take a look at LinkedIn Premium, discovering how much it costs, the benefits you get, and whether or not it’s good value for money.

How Much Does LinkedIn Premium Cost?

LinkedIn Premium actually has four different price tiers:

Premium Career: $29.99/month

Premium Business: $59.99/month

Sales Navigator Pro: $79.99/month

Recruiter Lite: $119.95/month

These prices don’t include sales tax, which could be applicable where you live. And you can pay annually to save 20 percent, which is a sizable amount of money.

Each tier offers different features, which we’ll cover later. However, most LinkedIn users will be interested in Premium Career—so you can plan on paying $30/month (or $288/year).

Additional job information may or may not be useful; when you’re looking through job listings, LinkedIn will tell you if you seem like a good candidate for a particular position.

Premium Career has some limitations, though. If you run a lot of people searches in a short period of time, LinkedIn will stop showing you results and tell you to get a Business subscription. And if you’re serious about making connections, you’re going to want more InMail credits.

That’s where the Premium Career vs. Premium Business distinction comes in. With Premium Business you get 10 InMail credits and unlimited people searching. Which is great for making connections. The additional information you can find on businesses may or may not be useful to you.

Reasons Why LinkedIn Premium Is Worth It

If you’re still not sure if you should pay for LinkedIn Premium, here are three specific reasons to consider:

1. See Who Looks at Your Profile

The first reason is because you get to see the people who looked at your profile. That might not seem like a big deal, but it’s hugely useful for making valuable connections.

Lots of people are looking at profiles on LinkedIn. Some are recruiters. Others are executives and managers looking to hire. Many are people in your field looking to make professional networking connections. All of these people make LinkedIn Premium worth it.

Even if you’re not looking for a job at the moment, you probably will be at some point in the future. And being well connected with people in your field has a lot of benefits, even outside of job hunting.

When you see that someone looked at your profile, it means they wanted to learn more about you. And that’s plenty reason to get in touch, either with an InMail or a connection request.

2. Get Access to Improved Metrics

The second reason is the ability to see your search appearances and profile views. Again, this might not seem like a huge deal. But if you’re trying to improve your LinkedIn profile (and you should be!), it’s a great metric for measuring your success.

When I joined LinkedIn Premium and started keeping track of my profile views, I had 30 or so per week. I now have closer to 150 per week. That’s five times as many people that see my profile on a weekly basis.

Without this, you’re going to have a much harder time figuring out whether or not you’ve improved your LinkedIn profile.

3. Unlock the LinkedIn Premium Badge

Finally, having a LinkedIn Premium account can improve your image. It seems inconsequential, but the little gold icon in your profile and on search results shows that you’re serious about using LinkedIn to build connections.

You might be surprised at how much more seriously people take you when you have that badge. Which makes it worth having when it comes to professional networking and job searching.

Timely comment for me, Chris.
Just investing now - I've been a semi-serious LinkedIn user for a few years, have noticed the improving functionality across the board (although Ads still make me tear my hair out...!) and I'm now specialising in B2B digital marketing space, so the upgrade makes a lot of sense right now.
Good to hear it's been good for you ... what 2-3 things have been your most valuable learnings?
Shane